Archive | January, 2012

Pie it Forward Celebrates National Pie Day

29 Jan

In case you haven’t caught on yet, last Monday was National Pie Day.  I had never heard of this holiday until recently, so naturally, I was all over it.  What better excuse to bake (and eat) tons of pie?  I spent the weekend baking up a storm and then the whole family hit the pavement to Pie it Forward.

Pie, pie and more pie...

We spent the day back in our old neighborhood showering our friends and former neighbors with packages of pie.

My thoughtful coworker gave me these great boxes!

First on my list were some friends from a group of moms that I met when my son was born.  I love these ladies and will eventually get pie to all of them!  These are women who withheld their judgement as I wished for my cat to die in a freak accident during the early weeks of my son’s birth. They didn’t flinch when I fled a party after mere minutes because our entire family was having a meltdown.  These are the friends who made me feel as if it was perfectly normal to stick my one year old in a blow-up baby bathtub filled with masses of leftover cooked pasta because I was out of ideas to entertain him. And for that, they deserve pie for the rest of their lives.

Pie for two! (well, her third actually)

Then is was on to the old ‘hood to drop in unexpectedly on some neighbors.

Neighbors are like family – no matter where you go, they will always be your neighbors.  As soon as each door opened, we were invited into their homes and spent the time talking, laughing and reminiscing.  My pie obsession was news to them, but they gratefully accepted the surprise package.

We wrapped up our time there and headed back so my husband could do his first official Pie it Forward.  My husband has chronic hives (don’t ask, we don’t know) and the pharmacist at our local drive-through pharmacy has gone the extra mile to help him.  She remembers his name, knows his prescriptions and makes him feel like she genuinely cares.

You should have seen the look on her face when instead of handing pills out of the window, she was handed a bag of pie into the window!  Although she was grateful for the nice gesture, she seemed a bit confused and surprised.  While I’m sure she does not get thank you pie everyday, we also learned the key to Pie it Forward – don’t forget to tell someone why you are thanking them!  I think my husband was a little nervous and he forgot to explain WHY he was giving her pie.  Practice will make perfect.

And now, the moment we have been waiting for…

The winner of the first Pie it Forward Challenge!

Lisa from Monterey, CA!

Lisa had a great story and really went out of her comfort zone to Pie it Forward!  She took the challenge and decided to extend her gratitude to Ronny Cox, an actor turned singer/songwriter who took the time last year to talk with her son and give him some advice about professional acting.  Here’s an excerpt from Lisa’s story:

It made me happy that this man would not only come to a small church that no one outside the area would have ever heard of and play a benefit concert for a small group of people to help a small, largely unknown, charity and to make himself accessible to everyone who came. So I decided that’s who I should give my pie (cake) to, Ronny Cox, actor, singer, songwriter and genuinely good person.

Nice work, Lisa!  You will receive this awesome decal/poster from Spiffy Decals.

As American As They Come Apple Pie

23 Jan

What better to commemorate National Pie Day then a big, deep-dish,  double-crust, packed to the brim, all-American apple pie?  And a darn right perfect one at that!  Yep, let’s just skip to the end – I did it and it was awesome.

Week after week, I sit here behind my keyboard and espouse my latest pietifications.  I’ve conquered fruit pies, lattice crusts, mini pies and butter crusts. Cream pies and custard pies – shoot, they ain’t got nothin’ on me.  Crimped edges?  Crispy bottom crust?  Bring it.  But there is one pie I have steered clear of.  One pie that threatens to topple all of the pie skills I have acquired over this past year.  The one, the only… DOUBLE CRUST APPLE PIE.  As if getting one crust right isn’t hard enough, this monstrosity demands perfection on the top and bottom!  I haven’t had the courage to take it on until now.  But a pie holiday calls for the most serious pie I can make.

This recipe is the collision of Grandma Ople’s tried and true and the America’s Test Kitchen 2006 scientific experiment.  I figured old school meets new school would be a good mash up.  Grandma Ople’s Apple Pie is one of the highest rated on Allrecipes.com.  If you know me, then you know that I swear by the four and five star recipes on that site.  On the rare occasion that I cook, you can pretty much bet that I found it on Allrecipes.  I also LOVE America’s Test Kitchen because really, why do your own experimenting when someone has already done it for you?

From Grandma Ople, I adopted her technique of making a caramel sauce to toss with the apples instead of the usual sugar/brown sugar mixture.  I also adopted the suggestion of saving some of that sauce and brushing the top crust with it.  America’s Test Kitchen confirmed what I had begun to notice about apple pie – cooking the apples first ensures that they don’t shrink away from the top crust and that you minimize the moisture that threatens to make your bottom crust soggy.  Voila – my perfect apple pie!

As American As They Come Apple Pie

Ingredients

1 double crust recipe of Best of Both Worlds pie crust.  Follow this link for the recipe and instructions.  Refrigerate the discs of dough for at least one hour or up to two days.

10 apples or about 5 pounds (6 Granny Smith, 4 Braeburn or Fuji)

1/2 teaspoon lemon zest

1 Tablespoon lemon juice

4 Tablespoons unsalted butter

3 Tablespoons flour

1 Tablespoon cornstarch

1/4 cup water

1/2 cup sugar

1/2 cup brown sugar

1 teaspoon cinnamon

1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

1/4 teaspoon nutmeg

1 egg white, slightly beaten (for bottom crust)

Directions

Roll one disc of dough into a 13 inch circle.  Place into a 91/2 inch deep dish pie plate.  Trim dough to leave a 1/2 inch overhang.  Return to refrigerator to chill.  Next, roll the other disc of dough into a 13 inch circle and place on a parchment-lined baking sheet and return to the refrigerator.

Place a baking sheet on the lowest rack of the oven.  Preheat oven to 425 (or 400 convection).

In a small bowl, combine 1/4 cup of the sugar with 1 teaspoon cinnamon and 1/4 teaspoon nutmeg.

 

Peel and slice apples into 1/4 inch thick slices.  You can cut some of the slices in half so that the apples lay more compactly.  Toss with sugar/spice mixture and 1/2 teaspoon lemon zest.  Place in a large dutch oven (or large skillet) and cook, covered, over medium heat for about 15 minutes.  Stir often and remove from heat when apples are soft but still hold their shape.  Place apples into a colander over a bowl to remove excess moisture.  Let cool to room temperature.

While apples are cooling, prepare caramel sauce.  In a medium saucepan, melt 4 Tablespoons of butter.  Once melted, add the flour and cornstarch to make a paste.  Add water, 1/2 cup brown sugar and remaining 1/4 cup of sugar.  Bring to a boil, stirring constantly.  Once the mixture reaches a boil, lower the heat and simmer for three minutes.  Remove from heat and add 1 teaspoon vanilla.

Toss apples with 1 Tablespoon lemon juice then add 2/3 of the caramel mixture.  Reserve some of the sauce to glaze the top crust.  Remove pie plate from refrigerator and brush bottom crust with slightly beaten egg white.  Pour apples into chilled pie shell and arrange so that they lay compactly.

I could have used more apples!

Cover gently with the top crust and trim the edges to 1/2 inch overhang.  To achieve an even edge, fold the edge of the top crust and tuck it under the edge of the bottom crust so that the smooth, folded edge is flush with the pie plate.  Create a decorative edge and then use a knife to cut four vents into the top.  Brush crust lightly with reserved caramel sauce and sprinkle with turbinado sugar if desired.

Place pie on baking sheet and bake for 35 – 45 minutes or until golden brown and juices bubble.

Use a pie shield or foil if crust begins to brown before pie is done.  Enjoy with ice cream, by itself, for breakfast, for a snack or all of the above!

 

 

Pie it Forward Challenge (Prize Give Away!)

18 Jan

Let it be known to the world that…

Monday, January 23rd is National Pie Day! 

Yes, my friends, not only have I discovered a new hobby, but I have also discovered a new set of holidays!  And if that were not enough, right on it’s heels is February – National Pie Month! Oh, what is a girl obsessed with pie to do?

The Pie it Forward Challenge!

To celebrate National Pie Day, I’m challenging all of you to bake a pie over the weekend and give it away to someone.  Not only will you get the greatest gift of all by doing something nice for someone, but you will be eligible to enter Pie Eyed’s first prize give away!  Here are the rules:

1.  Bake a pie – any pie.  If it has a crust and some filling, it counts.

2. Give it away to someone (take a picture if you want!)

3. Comment back on this post to tell me you did it and then email your story to pieeyedbaker@yahoo.com by Friday, January 27th.

I will choose a Pie it Forward participant to receive this awesome decal from Spiffy Decals:

This should motivate you to make some pie!

 

Now go forward and make some pie!

 

Homemade Vanilla Extract

16 Jan

I have a silent competition going on in my office – I want to be the best baker.  I want to be the one that brings in a treat and watches my co-workers rush to the table because of my stellar reputation as the workplace baker.  Every office has one.  The minute word spreads that Jane brought in her famous blueberry pound cake, you rush to the kitchen hopeful that the office Gods have spared you a piece.

The reality is, I’m not always that girl.  There are a few of us who try to edge each other out with a secret sugar cookie recipe, or a homemade cake served up on a vintage cake platter.  But I have my place in the competition, so I have always regarded bringing baked goods to work as my territory.

Then one day, everything changed.  I had just arrived to work and was loaded down with my usual computer bag, lunch bag, bag of work papers that had accumulated in my car for a month, and a coffee.  I rounded the corner, and was greeted by a gorgeous pink cake sitting on the kitchen table.  As my bags dropped to the ground, I knew right away that this cake was a game-changer.  It was beautiful – none of us in this office could decorate like that.  Surely it wouldn’t taste as good as it looked!  After all, that’s my theory – the prettier the cake, the worse it tastes.

Without bothering to put my things away, I started scouring the office to see who the mystery cake maker was.  Down the row of offices I traveled, gathering more followers as I went along.  Everyone was eager to find out who this cake belonged to, and more importantly, when we could eat it.   Then I found her – it was the new girl I had just hired into my department.  Gasp!  I have just hired my own replacement!

We surrounded the table, passed out slices and began to eat.  Two bites in, a commotion arose from the back hall.  We walked back to find Dee Dee half out of her chair, hollering that this cake was so good she might cry.  I stood in utter disbelief.  This girl is only one week  in and has Dee Dee on the floor hollering in ecstasy over cake!  Here’s the thing about Dee Dee – you want to be on her good side because if Dee Dee’s not happy, ain’t no one happy.  And not much makes Dee Dee happy.  Except this cake apparently.  One week and the new girl has not only thwarted me from my reign as Cake Queen, but she has won over Dee Dee – something I’ve been trying to do for 8 years!

THIS CAKE WAS AMAZING.  I bowed down to her and begged for the recipe, asking her what in the world made it so good.  Her answer?  Homemade vanilla extract.  She was convinced that the homemade extract elevated the flavor and was better than any vanilla you could buy at the store.

Ever since that day, I’ve been eager to make my own vanilla.

While pie is usually judged by it’s crust, I’m just as picky about what goes into that crust.  From taste to texture – it has to be outstanding.  I mean, why spend all that careful time making a great crust and then dump a can of shiny, gooey pie filling into it?  I get so angry when I’m duped.  Like at the County Fair when the guy swore that the banana cream pie was an old family recipe and after one bite I could tell it was banana pudding with imitation banana flavoring.  Yuck.

I’m the most obsessive about vanilla.  I love, love, love vanilla and, yes, I pay $10 for that tiny bottle.  I feel like the father in My Big Fat Greek Wedding who thinks he can cure everything with Windex.  I’m constantly having to reign in my tendency to add vanilla to everything.  It is high time I attempt some homemade vanilla – if not only to ramp up the taste of my sweets, but to save some money!

Homemade Vanilla Extract

For holiday gifts this year, I decided to make homemade vanilla extract and vanilla sugar for everyone.  What a great gift it turned out to be – so easy to make and a little goes a long way.  I had gifts for everyone!  If you want the gift to be ready to use, you’ll need to start two months ahead of time.  However, because planning is not my forte, I just attached gift tags that had the date it would be ready.

Because I was making a lot of extract, I found a reputable vendor to purchase beans for a good price.  Vanilla Products USA sells a pound of Madagascar beans for $27! AND, when the package arrived, they had thrown in an extra 1/8 of a pound.  It was vanilla heaven!

Ingredients

Vodka (decent vodka)

Madagascar vanilla beans

Directions

You will need 2 vanilla beans per 8 ounces of vodka.

Split the vanilla beans and place into container of your choice.  Mason jars, or any glass bottle with a good lid or seal.  I used 4 ounce bottles from a local craft store.  You could also put the beans right into the vodka bottle.

Pour vodka into the container and seal tightly.

Store in a cool, dark place for two-three months shaking once a week to distribute the vanilla.  Word has it, the longer it sits the better it will be (up to  six months if you are really serious).

The beans will continue to make extract for up to a year.  When your vanilla is about 75% gone, top it off with more vodka, wait a month and then you have more!

Here's the vanilla I made for myself after 1 month

Homemade Vanilla Sugar

1 vanilla bean

2 cups of sugar

Split the vanilla bean and scrape vanilla into the sugar.  Bury the vanilla bean in the sugar, cover and let sit for one week.  Use to flavor coffee, tea, oatmeal or to bake with!

Pear Eggnog Winter Pie

5 Jan

It’s 2012 and the best thing to do for a new year is to come clean and start fresh.  Don’t get excited – there’s nothing juicy here like sordid affairs, slipping my kids Benadryl so they will sleep, or a problem with shop lifting.  My confessions are rather mundane, but they are mine and blogging about them makes me feel like I can bless and release them, then move on.

I don’t recycle if the item is upstairs, in the kids’ room, in the bathroom, or anywhere really but the kitchen. And this is a step towards a greener me.

I feel guilty that I don’t feel guilty for being a working Mom.  I’ve felt like this for a while and am waiting for some type of guilt to set in for working full time and liking it.  But I’m fine.  So instead, I feel guilty that I don’t feel guilty.

I did karaoke just before Christmas in a bar full of strangers.  On a Wednesday. Sober.  My husband and I also have our own personal library of karaoke songs – nearly 1,000.  And we do karaoke.  Sober.  On any day.

This blog didn’t start entirely because of pie and I didn’t tell you the whole story.  I was totally into pie, so that part is true. The rest of the truth is that this blog came into being because I needed a distraction from a miscarriage that I had over the summer.  My husband and I finally got the nerve to try for a third child, succeeded for a brief moment, and lost the pregnancy.  This was my fourth miscarriage (three before my first son) and I was looking for a way to distract myself from the disappointment.  While I think I cope with my miscarriages pretty darn well, I do tend to do something slightly drastic after each one.

#1 – adopted two cats.

#2 – Painted every room downstairs in one night

#3 – Moved to Portland, Oregon (for a minute – found out I was pregnant (again) three weeks after I got there, quit my job and moved back to Cleveland.  That was the now 5 year old.)

Having a fourth miscarriage in the midst of raising two boys, a dog, a cat (left over from the first miscarriage), and a harder job left me with slim pickings for drastic change.  So instead of moving across the country, I started baking even more pie and blogging about it.  In those first weeks, I was making pie three or four times a week.  Pie is about precision and paying attention – especially when you’re new at it.  I found that the process of making pie cleared my head and prevented my mind from wandering and over-analyzing the summer’s events.  The rolling, the shaping, the baking, the eating – pie raised up my let down spirits and provided comfort.  And since we’re confessing here, it also added a few more pounds.

I love making pie.  I love giving it to people.  I didn’t know it at the time, but this funny little hobby has given me so much more than just a distraction.  It’s given me some space in my life to practice the art of gratitude and acceptance.  And that’s what I never had before – I always had to react, to make sense of things, make a plan, move on, go, go, go.  Who knew pie would teach me how to just be still and enjoy the slice of life that is mine?

Pear Eggnog Winter Pie

Adapted from Vegetarian Times

My coworker sent me a recipe for a Pear Eggnog Pie from Vegetarian Times a couple of weeks ago.  One look at this pie and I knew it was my next suspect!  There were some things about it that I wanted to tweak, so I used the recipe as my base and developed what I think is a pretty awesome winter pie.

Ingredients

1 recipe of pie dough for a 9 inch crust

10 gingersnaps (pulsed into fine crumbs)

3 medium pears (peeled and sliced about 1/4 -1/2 inch thick)

1 Tablespoon crushed or minced fresh ginger (in the jar if you’re lazy like me)

1 teaspoon fresh lemon juice

1/2 cup sugar

2 eggs

1 can evaporated milk

2 1/2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract

1 Tablespoon rum

1 teaspoon cinnamon

1/2 teaspoon nutmeg

Directions

Ahead of time:

Make pie dough and refrigerate for at least 1 hour or up to two days.

Pre-bake the crust:

Preheat oven to 400.  Roll dough into a 12 inch circle and place into a 9 inch pie plate.  You will want to leave a one-inch over hang by cutting the dough to even it out.  Tuck edges under and sculpt an upstanding ridge if desired.  Place pie plate in refrigerator for 15 minutes.

Partially bake the crust by lining the pie with foil filled with rice, beans or pie weights.  You want enough to keep the crust from puffing up while baking.  Place the pie on the center rack and bake for 25 minutes.  Carefully remove the foil (save the rice for next time!), and using a fork, poke several holes into the bottom of the crust – particularly in the parts that have puffed. Bake for another 8 minutes until just barely starting to brown.  Remove from oven and let cool while you make the filling. * Cover the edges with foil or a pie shield if browning too fast.

Make the filling:

Keep oven at 400.  Using a food processor or mini-chopper (or a ziploc bag and a rolling pin) turn the ginersnaps into fine crumbs.  Line the baked, cooled crust with a thin layer of gingersnap crumbs.

Peel and slice pears.  Toss together with lemon juice and ginger in a medium bowl.  Arrange the pears in rows, standing on edge along the bottom of the crust.  Place pie plate on a baking sheet.

Whisk the sugar and eggs together until well blended.  Add in the evaporated milk.  Continuing to whisk well, add the vanilla, nutmeg, cinnamon and rum.  Pour mixture over pears into the prepared pie shell.

Place pie on the center rack of the oven and cook for 15 minutes at 400.  Lower the temperature to 350 and cook for another 35-40 minutes until the middle is set.  Ovens will vary, so begin watching it after 30 minutes.  Enjoy with ice cream or fresh whipped cream!

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